Given this spring and summers extremely dry conditions as well as obvious and wholehearted community concern the collective of residents and lifelong Cortesians that organize this unique event, we have decided that unless we have a substantial amount of rain within the next couple of weeks we have to postpone this years festivities until further notice.

For the past month many of us have been discussing the potential of having to cancel and or postponing year 19 of the Carrington Bay camp out due to this dry weather. It looks like we have approached what many of us have been feeling. Quite simply if weather conditions stay the same it would be too unsafe for us to proceed with the event on July 31.

Carrington Bay is the longest running event of its kind in BC and is still completely free. Over the years we have worked on and off with all of the necessary stakeholders such as RCMP, parks services, fire warden, Cortes recycling center as well as FOCI to name a few. All of the core collective either live on Cortes, grew up or have spent a good amount of their lives there. We care very deeply for this place.

After 10 plus years myself I assure you our safety systems are sound, proven and have with stood the test of time. This event is approaching its 20th year. These systems are in place because we know how important they are. When you consider the general danger of that site, the track record over 18 years is sound and with that so are the systems. Apart from the numerous people who throughout the weekend keep an eagle eye out to ensure a safe environment, there is always butt cans, fire tools, buckets, at least one water pump but we planned on having 4 this year as well as over 1000 feet of hose. Other things we have talked about were limiting camping to within 200 feet of the water. We always leave it cleaner than when we found it. In addition, our culture in the bay is based around fire safety. In short it is not cool to be careless down there.

Please do not talk about this event on social media be it good things or bad. We have done a very good job of keeping this event a quiet one and would like to keep it that way for next year. We are looking into having some people posted in Campbell River for that weekend as well as some signage to prevent people who missed this memo from continuing the trip to the bay. We will be able to successfully put the word out to the right people but there could still be some stragglers. We are working on ways of mitigating that potential.

Your concerns are our concerns. As a close knit community we hope for direct communication. We encourage you to reach out with questions or concerns on any level in regards to Carrrington bay. When you are on the outside looking in things feel much scarier. As always you are always welcome to come see for yourself. We humbly ask you to think for a moment that we adore this place as much as you, that we've been doing this for a very long time and we always treat it as though it is a sacred space, and that the concerns of the current residents are also our concerns.

Wishing for rain for many reasons beyond our camp out. We hope everyone can get through this severe dry spell safely and without any further repercussions to our forests and homes.